


the glamorous strider lifestyle

by cyclopsBlinder (tereziswife2942)



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 08:59:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tereziswife2942/pseuds/cyclopsBlinder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the brothers strider are gross bachelors. things get a little out of hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the glamorous strider lifestyle

The first time John expresses jealousy over Dave’s living situation – “Your bro’s kinda weird, but it must be nice not having to clean your room, like, ever.  Man, I hate having to load the dishwasher right after I eat, otherwise I get in trouble and have to clean the _whole kitchen_ as punishment for leaving out a couple measly bowls!” – his initial response is to say “Hell fucking yeah, it’s great being a Strider, dude. I’d invite you to join us but there’s already a surplus of awesome in this apartment, we’re probably at risk of getting taken in for exceeding maximum chill levels at any moment.” Because it’s true, Dave is satisfied with his life in their bachelor pad, although he could do without some (all) of the smuppets.

But then he starts thinking about John’s whining about cleaning. Yeah, doing the dishes is lame as fuck and keeping fireworks is definitely a better use of the dishwasher’s capabilities, but honestly, sometimes the place gets kinda…nasty. Actually, it’d be better to say that nasty is the default setting on Strider life, and when it gets really bad it’s a defcon one on the tensions between the filth and his nose. It’s to be expected – they’re two males with poor communication skills living together with no adult supervision. (Bro doesn’t count as adult. He got his adult privileges revoked last week for making that Rainbow Dash smuppet.) But still, sometimes it’s nigh unbearable.

When Bro’s driving Dave to school, he likes to hotbox the car. How he manages to make it smell that disgusting when all he’s had for breakfast is a granola bar and maybe some hash browns and a sausage biscuit if he’s feeling generous and they drive through McDonald’s, Dave will never know. If he’s in a really evil mood, he’ll pick him up after school and drive them through Taco Bell, order five bean burritos, and eat them all. This is Dave’s cue to attempt to roll down the window while pretending to be perfectly chill. Bro always notices, of course, and puts the window lock on as he says, “Damn, those burritos made quick work of my digestive system. Batten down the hatches, little man, a storm’s comin’ in on the front. Wait, I mean back,” and Dave just rolls his eyes behind his shades and says, “Gross, dude. I feel like twice in a day is too much, no one man should have all that flatulence,” and pointedly doesn’t hold his nose. He tries to breathe through his mouth the whole way back.

On nights Bro’s too lazy to take them out to dinner or make something simple like beans and weenies or his famous mac n cheese burgers, he just orders in. Pizza’s their favorite, since it’s pretty fucking hard to go wrong with cheese and dough and tomato sauce. Half the time Dave just sneaks off to his room with one of the boxes so he can bother his friends on Pesterchum and give a brief thought to doing his homework.  And if he can’t finish the whole thing, well, the big trash can in the kitchen is way too far away and his won’t fit the pizza box, so he just tosses it in the corner of the closet from his seat. That works for a couple of weeks, until he starts noticing a funky smell on his shirts. Further investigation reveals a sight that no man should have to witness. Dave febreezes the shit out of the boxes and figures they can wait another day while he musters up the courage to touch them with bare hands. He’s not going to use gloves, that’s weak-ass shit, and it’s not like the pizza boxes can kill him. At least, he’s pretty sure. Finally, they get herded into a big trash bag and rushed down the stairs, right into the dumpster behind the apartment complex. “Welp, I’m never doing that again,” he declares, sniffing his hands gently and grimacing. Bro orders pizza the next week and he promptly begins the cycle all over again.

Burping is completely in the ordinary for most families, but when it comes to the two of them, it’s taken to an extreme, as many things are in the Strider household. Belching contests are a daily occurrence – Bro always wins, Dave claims it’s only because he’s old and has worse digestion – and when some particularly pungent food is consumed, they always try to flashstep up to each other and breathe the burp into the other’s face before they can escape. In the event of a simultaneous burp, it’s either mutually assured destruction or a truce can be called. Neither of them ever invokes the truce. Bro once heard Dave reminiscing the contents of his lunch in his room, burst in, and told him to “Keep goin’, dude, that’s awesome,” and quickly brought his recording equipment in. He used the sample to create an ironic dubstep song. Dave still has it on his iPod because it’s actually pretty decent. His oral flatulence makes a surprisingly good bassline and easily replicates the speaker-breaking thrum of usual dubstep fare.

What really makes him realize the true repulsive nature of their existence, though, is the cockroach infestation. He spots the first one in the shower, skittering along the ceiling in circles like it’s on a mission to make his day as shitty as possible. He also spots the second one when he ends his shower prematurely and goes out into the hallway. This one runs into the air vent the moment he moves towards it. It’s nearly as fast as him, which is disgustingly impressive.  This wouldn’t have crossed the line if they’d just bought some roach repellant and those little plastic squares with poison inside them. (Dave always wonders why they fall for those. It’s like trying to kill a person by laying out a piece of cardboard with cyanide brushed all over it and writing “EAT ME” on it. At least make them look like something a cockroach would like, maybe a piece of rotten fruit or some of Dave’s stonk pizza.)

But Bro’s response to the infestation is “Shit, those little bastards think they can get the best of us? Hell naw, I’m gonna take ‘em out the old-fashioned way.”

“Please tell me the old-fashioned way is calling a pest control service,” Dave says. Bro’s response to this is to slam his leg down onto a passing cockroach and grin maniacally.

For the next week, the two of them battle the roaches with their flashstep skills. Dark insect bodies litter the floors of their apartment. Bro refuses to sweep the carcasses out so that he can “show the others just what’s comin’ to ‘em.” It’s pretty fucking intense as far as fights against nearly-brainless creatures with little else than an instinct for survival and a predilection for the rotten go. It is also nauseating to see their little guts squish everywhere as Bro flash-stomps across the living room. So, thinking wistfully of John’s sparkling clean house, he decides something had to change. He sure as hell isn’t gonna talk to Bro directly about it, though, caught in the throes of roach bloodlust as he is. He knows someone who has a guardian equally as disinclined to cleanliness.

“Yo, Rose,” he greets her on the webcam chat that night.

“Hello, Dave,” she answers. “By the abruptness of the call and your especially terse tone of voice, I assume there is something amiss. Are you in need of my faux psychological prodding?”

“Yeah, sorta. Listen, your mom does the whole ironic housewife thing but never actually cleans, right?”

She lifts her brows. He can tell that she’s not pleased about being asked about her mother. It’s a sore subject, and she obviously is hoping to address his weaknesses, not hers. But still, she answers. “Your summary is accurate, although I’m not sure it’s ironic per se. I’d call it more an act of passive aggression against the state of my own room, which is usually rather messy, I’m afraid. She long ago claimed my room was my own domain, though, so it’s absolutely none of her business. This merely makes her comments of the housekeeping nature more barbed, of course. I think the bronze vacuum might be legitimately ironic, though.”

“So? How d’you get your passive-aggressive asses in gear and actually make the house acceptable for habitation?” he presses.

“Oh, that’s simple. Mother just hires maids. I hire my own squad of cleaning ladies to come at the same time so she has to deal with straightening out the confusion of who’s to clean what. Why, are you and Bro having issues with the state of your own domicile?”

Hired help. He had thought of it before, but the idea of having a maid was just not cool, and didn’t really hit that level of transcendent irony. It was just uncomfortably lame. But maybe he didn’t need to hire cleaning people. Maybe he could take a page from Rose’s passive-aggressive book.

“Pretty much. Thanks, Rose, I think I’m good. Talk to you later.” He goes to close the chat as she tries to protest, obviously wanting to snoop further than he’d allowed.

The battle for Strider dominance is over by the next week and Bro actually helps him sweep out the dried roach bodies, so that’s a plus. He sets about arranging his plan. It’s just in time for their birthdays, so he decides to use it as Bro’s present. Normally he would feel lame wasting time on this shit – it feels kinda like a prank and that’s Egbertian levels of uncool – but it honestly just takes an online purchase and a phone call the night before.

It’s finally the day Dave’s been only mildly excited in the chilliest of ways for. Late that afternoon, Bro brings out a store-ordered cake with a SBaHJ panel on it and a long, thin present wrapped clumsily. Dave makes a crack about it probably being the world’s longest dildo and opens it to find, shockingly enough, another shitty sword. It’s much less shitty than usual though. The gesture is ironically sentimental.

A knock sounds at the door. Dave stays on the ground and pretends to be absorbed in inspecting his new sword, saying “Yo can you get that?” Bro sighs, lurching to his feet and flashing to the door. As he opens it, he is greeted by six pretty girls in dangerously skimpy maid outfits. One of them is holding a boombox and she flips it on as they all sway into the apartment. Bro stands back as he closes the door and Dave can tell by the upward twitch of his eyebrows and mouth that he’s fairly amused. He doesn’t blame him. Hiring strippers for a dude who hasn’t shown interest in much more than puppet dong is ironic as hell. As they begin their routine, Bro settles onto the couch, his elbows resting on his knees. Dave lets it go for a little while before he stands up and clears his throat. The girls all keep gyrating, one’s ass dangerously close to Bro’s pointy shades, but their attention is clearly on him.

“All right, ladies, that’s enough. Time to get cleaning,” he orders. Bro’s eyebrows take a hike all the way up his forehead. He’s clearly taken this for Dave’s usual crude innuendo.

“Yes, sir!” they all say in unison. They brandish their cheap cleaning instruments and start moving around the apartment. One’s sweeping the floor; another is dusting above the cabinets. One is – wow, she’s cleaning the stains on the wall by using her ass to rub the cloth all over it. That’s above and beyond the call of booty.

Meanwhile, Bro is completely still on the couch. Dave can see his shoulders shaking slightly in mirth, though, and his lips are pressed firmly together. That’s the most amused he’s seen him since that time Dave had a full-on diva tantrum over the store being out of apple juice. He doesn’t say anything, though, just observes the stripper maids cleaning their apartment. They’re actually doing a great job, considering that most of their cleaning items are cheap and useless. No one even brought any Windex and they don’t have any under the sink, just more fireworks. And yet, the windows are getting cleaner just from paper towels and water. That may be more a testament to how dirty they were initially.

The apartment looks less like a disaster now. One of the girls, bless her soul, piled all the smuppets in a corner so most of the floor is now visible. All the garbage has been thrown away; all the stray bits and ends put away somewhere, all the shitty swords requisitioned to the fridge. Dave honestly doesn’t remember it ever being this organized-looking. Even when he was little, he just had to navigate the obstacle course of the living room and deal with it.

“Okay, I think you’re done. Thanks, guys,” Dave tells them. They grin and thank him for the most interesting job they’ve had in a while. After they’ve all cleared out of the apartment, Dave turns to Bro. He’s still sitting there, though he seems to have gotten over his silent laughing fit.

“All right, man,” he says, “you’re in charge of taking out the garbage and cleaning your own bathroom. And no pizza box hoarding any more. And no more cockroach wars, I promise.”

“Oh okay, that’s cool. Dunno why you’re bringing that up though, I just felt like having some strippers clean for me. Really gets me going, you know. Damn, dust that shelf harder, girl. Yeah, that’s good.” He snorts at that and Dave crooks a grin at him. They fistbump and all is well in Striderdom.


End file.
